It's not always practical to get a marketing degree. Here are ways to get into marketing without having a degree.

Here’s the transcript:

Hey everyone, it’s Mindi Rosser from mindizone.com where we do marketing that matters and we’re really excited today to be talking about how to become a marketer without getting a degree.

A lot of you may think that it’s important to get a marketing degree before you get into the business. I’m here to say you can get into the marketing business without having a degree in marketing management. And I did that myself. Now I did take some classes related to marketing in college and that’s great but my diploma does not say marketing expert. That is something I had to overcome in my own mindset when I was applying for marketing jobs.

Here’s how I got into marketing really quickly. I was trying to promote my own book and I was told to get into social media because I needed to build relationships. So I got into marketing based on relationship building. That led to my working for Starr Hall at starrhall.com, she’s an amazing social media expert with an awesome personality. I learned a lot from her. And that got me into working at a marketing agency because she was joining a marketing agency at the time. From there I fell in love with marketing, mostly the community manager aspect, because I love building communities and relationships. I can’t stand the fluffy stuff.

That’s how I got into marketing and I’ve heard a lot of similar stories. So don’t be intimidated if you feel like you have the skill set to get into marketing. You probably do if you are interested in marketing and you love social media or you like emails. Maybe you like email campaigns.

There are areas of marketing that are good entry points. For me it was social media. If you’re great with social media and with your personal profiles and you like talking to people online you may want to look for a social media internship. There are a lot of non-profits out there looking for someone to manage their social media communities. You can do an internship with them to test the waters and see if you really like it. That internship can turn into a full or part-time job with them or you can use that to launch your career and say I have social media experience. It’s a really good idea to get one or two years of experience before you start applying for marketing agency jobs. Otherwise just apply for marketing agency internships and that’s a way to get into the door if you don’t have marketing agency experience.

Another way to do it is look for small businesses and see if they need help with their social media. For instance if there’s someone you really enjoy reading their emails or love their blog and are really passionate about what they do maybe they’re smaller and don’t have a full time community manager. Maybe you can ask them if you can help out with their social media channels and do an internship for them or be their social media assistant.

The third and final way is to start your own business and start doing social media marketing for your own business. Say you have a blog, whether it’s related to marketing or not, you can use that to get into marketing before you start applying for jobs. Build that brand, build your own brand and build your own social media channels and that can be a good entry point to get an awesome marketing job. I’m here to say that I love marketing and I highly recommend it if you are an online extrovert like me. I love talking online, I’m not as much of an in-person person, try out marketing. I feel that there’s a little bit for everyone. If you’re on the sales side, if you’re on the email side of things or if you’re on the writers side or the analytics side there’s a lot of different ways to get into marketing.
So if you have a story to tell me about your journey or maybe you have a question about getting into marketing and you’re wondering ‘hey, can you just answer my question. This is who I am and I want to get into marketing, how do I do it’ I would love to hear from you. Just shoot me an email to mindi@mindirosser.com and I’ll get right back to you. I can’t wait to talk to you next week so go rock your week.